About
Chicago, Libra, 1974.
I play in the band Joan of arc and like Snooki, I am a Published Author. Unlike Snooki, I am an Italian-American.
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Tim Kinsella
Weird Public Struggle, Etc.
Chicago, Libra, 1974.
I play in the band Joan of arc and like Snooki, I am a Published Author. Unlike Snooki, I am an Italian-American.
Tim Kinsella 
Hello!
Glass sentiment
breaking the goodman
and woman, nevertheless
a grand garden
seemed moveable,
chance unfollowed
as ancient styles
gain, sophisticated
bodies passed over
again looking
again calm.
Pretty, fresh
winds bow
the need
to grow
to form
consider
it strange
not to rumble.
Dear Tim,
Hope this message finds you well.
All the best.
– Max
HI Tim I’m a young man Brampton, Ontario close to Toronto, Libra, 1992. I really like your lyrics and music from a lot of your works since cap’njaz and Joan Of Arc I notice you are a brilliant person and I must admit im confused and I feel dumb Im not very book smart but If you have any good books for me to start reading what would you suggest I’m reading Platos Protagoras and last I read was Voltaire’s Candide. I like trying to understand people and their social roles and opinions and how they go about in portraying themselves. I dont mean to be selling my self here because i make music but I dont have good lyrical material if you or anyone could criticize or comment id appreciate that here it is to listen to what i got lambtoast: https://soundcloud.com/lambtoast .
Hi Gianni thanks for the kind words. It seems to me that you might not be giving yourself enough credit. You are obviously quite thoughtful. Maybe you might like reading something a little more contemporary than Plato or Voltaire – maybe that would make reading seem like a joy instead of a chore? Some fun but thoughtful contemporary novelists might be Roberto Bolano or Michel Houellebecq. Borges’ short stories or Calvino might be good places to start?
i just thought it would be nice to say hi because your music inspires me a bit further than music should, probably. then again, i could be wearing a backwards yankees hat with the goatee or something other. you know what would be cool? you guys playing Owls – Later at a show someday so i can watch it on youtube.
/random kid
This is, well… you are brilliant. I’m happy you express yourself. Your self-awareness and sass seen through cap’n jazz and joan of arc influenced my teenage angst and your writing comforts my adult thought process.
Also, thanks for letting me tell you I feel like a 54 year old woman during menopause as we smoked cigarettes in NYC after the joan of arc show. I’m sure being a vegetarian whose a Libra will work out for you. Salutations and cheers, my friend.
Ooh, cool.
you inspired me a lot mister, not the best but your lyric all brilliant – boo human for example, lot of personal message but fine not cheesy, also how you handle your life with proper as musician and graduated master student, and how you not go down even cops in the bar let you down laughing for you as vegetarian. you are the man !!
Thanks. It certainly wouldn’t seem from my perspective that I’ve been handling my life properly, but I’m glad I guess that I’ve somehow pulled off such an impression.
Tim. Stop being so hard on yourself. Many people look up to you. Everyone’s (well most) perspective of themselves is skewed negatively. But yours shouldn’t be.
I don’t know how else to tell you but you should write more fiction – “The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense” is great and I would certainly enjoy reading more of your work.
Thanks.
Thanks! I’m revising the new book right now, hopefully done in the next couple weeks. It’s all there, but I gotta get rid of the sentences like this – “Their practiced roles quickly made the mysterious dynamic between them apparent.” Ha ha! WTF is that shit?!?!
Hahaha, I can’t wait! Revise on 🙂
I have no idea how to tell you in words how much I have listened to your music over the years and how it continues to leave me in awe every time I listen to it.
So I’ll say thanks and try and attend one of your shows if you ever come to Ireland
Hi Tim. — Was wondering how much if at all the poetry of Hart Crane figured into the semi-recent self-titled put out by JOA. I have reasons to believe a more than tenuous link does exist, beyond the obvious “Chaplinesque.” — Thanks.
Ha. Awesome. I love a question that implies someone’s paying attention to details. I never knew Hart Crane well at all, just came across his poems in passing. But I was getting excited about him around the time of this recording. The original cover was not only Charlie Chaplin and the Elephant Man, but also Hart Crane, Bas Jan Ader, King Kong and Elvis. They all had these strange things in common with one another and these overlaps kind of guided what the record came to be about. For example, it was interesting to me to consider Bas Jan Ader in terms of Charlie Chaplin and Bas Jan Ader was a suicide at sea in his early-30’s just like Hart Crane. And like you said, “Chaplinesque.” So you know, I’m always trying to get out of my own head and my own limited perspectives with songs, so this game with famous weirdos helped prompt a lot of decisions. Once these kinds of connections became clear, the next step then became layering them – meaning, unsure what else a song needs, I consider it filtered through the characters who had already been established. – Maybe I explained that OK I hope. Thanks
Very interesting and thanks for the reply. “Peace Corpse” seemed just at first listen really truly (knowing your punning) an entire song sprung up from line 5 of “The Broken Tower” and like how you say “everytime I saw the same things differently” it made me think of how when I first read “The Broken Tower” and how Crane’s getting at all these plangent and sad sounds sprung up or rather down tolling from a churchyard as if he went straight to the thesaurus as a means toward drilling into the reader’s head how all these sad sounds can be put into language differently yet bring about the same super strong emotions and maybe how their being pigeontoed into language really just goes to show how much feeling triumphs forever over reason. Happy Holidays, Tim.
that’s “say the same things differently;” my typo, and apologies for the pedantry.
and pigeonholed not pigeontoed
you can delete all my comments since I fucked up your About page.
Ha you didn’t fuck it up. It’s an open and collaborative, ever-evolving thing.
East of Eden, totally lost. Walking while taking a leak, as the winds cross; me… I’m lost while being blessed in wisdom. It’s all over my faces, while the boney finger of the queen of the king of nod, traces my pale skin in unhonest disgrace. Pleasure and pain bolth made fixed like a crystallized salt in my veins. I’m Telling the truth about Sesame Street and trash cans dumpster diving from a platform. Platinum paint on a hunk of lead, electronics sales dogs feeding me speaker wire coated in leads promising gold. Gracious gentalmen at a dinner party, splitting a sodom apple. Her eyes are in mine as I suck all dross out of the collective veins deep in the center of this hollow earth. It’s the pressure that creates a vein in this perpetual motion machine fueled by shit. That drips down, or floats up, it can be pain or bliss an earthly kiss. Dancing in a centrapetal spiral counter a place without time. Just staring at the spice rack the gods use in eternity they taste divine. Copperphasia, as a game of solitaire placed in front of me as I watch local universal channels, forgot to subscribe for infinity on my gasoline arabesque glimmering unconsciously djinn controlled public mescaline amphetamine paralytic Thorazine powered TV. I have a taste for them all, those over the dune. Yet I’m just a truffled troubled toad in a plastic castle a youngish elder transforming man Asian Caucasian grandmother blues savant seen everyday, a crayon mayor and children’s book murder expressionist who was taught since birth that fiction didn’t exist. Completely normal to watch our lives on an antique screen, while munching on solar nails of Amy Winehouses pictures of neural objective subject ” their objective of this subject ” filled with: They think I’m drunk poisoned on mercury, in a speak easy. Its the symbol of my singularity self discovered masterbatory fertilized generation based on genitals. I try to, do you hear me? Truly, I stand making hats for mind control victims of nano robotic or trams dimensional toil. They once stood with crowns of tin foil now we make them stand tall, voices and all. Trying to make conversation, that’s all… Isn’t this strange attractors language connecting us all? Oh no, lost at the kiosk trapped between two words and spaces one word is my new mantra I’m screaming about town, all out loud “novelty”.
Hi Tim, this is your 75 year old aunt currently living in Singapore. I notice you identify yourself as an “Italian American”. What happened to your Irish ancestry?
Cheers, Aunt Margie
(Sorry to clog your page, HAD to contact you). (Respectfully).
It is interesting when we clearly see the taking of one another’s language seeping into the name of poetic culture, culture in general; interesting when someone decides to “make it new,” as Pound insisted upon for the better part of the Modernist era, and ultimately limits conceptual creativity. Where is the line between thievery and innovation? We know Eliot mentioned that “a good poet borrows a great poet steals,” but how far did he expect modernity to go? Eliot did not so mean for the new poet to literally take exact words and phrases and implant them into a new poem. The idea behind the language is what enables the emerging poets to deliver themselves to craft and originality. This is why I am writing to you. Paul Valery was anxious that the future of poetry would convolute itself into a realm of thievery and a stunted engagement with poetry, and it’s arrested, authentic impact on culture.
This may not matter to you, and I apologize if this bothers you. Forgive me, my heartache and love of language. My heart is in the right place and my reason to share this with you is that I believe in the function of the poet in society. Think of me, a stranger, lifting the sword from my dictionary in defense of poetic thievery, and the immense respect I have for JOA related sound and language.
I worry that this author who has lifted your language and implanted them into his own has wounded the temperament of a slice of modern poetics. This “poet” if at this point I may call him that, diffidently, “teaches” our brethren at the college level, which is the exact didactic approach to thievery I am not in favor of, and I remain breathing constantly heavy with my metaphorical sword in hand.
I worry, boy, I worry. Not only does this poem below lift your lyrics but the “author” has a book out called “A Portable Model of How Memory Works” as well.
The links below explains my defense! Am I wrong, boy, forgive me!
http://www.anomalouspress.org/4/18.mains.pomode.php
http://www.shampoopoetry.com/shampoothirtyseven/mains.html
ps. Forgive grammatical mistakes, I am at work!!!
lovingly,
Jasper Lewis.
Ah ha! I finally found you! This is your Auntie Kay- and yes, Never, never deny the influence of the Irish Catholic farm family in your ancestry!!!1 You are too neat. Wish we were neighbors so I could tap into you daily. XO MK
Look up Snooki and you’ll get the joke!
dear tim,
i found your book at a bookshop in paris. i was so excited and i made a little “eeeii” sound when i took it off the shelf. at the checkout, i pointed to your name and i said, “this guy’s from my hometown. this guy has poured me whiskey on, like, a tuesday night. and his book is here! small world, huh?” and the dude at the checkout said, “i guess.”
à la prochaine,
alison
(and thanks for the whiskey. they just don’t pour it the same here…)
Tim, my afro and I met you last night in Omaha, where we bought a bunch of your books for our friends. You played a great show that was worth every second of lost Wednesday sleep. It was insane to watch one of my foremost musical and lyrical influences in his element, playing that style that a bunch of us have had to consciously try not to mimic because it’s such a seductive, life-affirming style. Also, to hear you joking about deceptive orgasms (if I followed your innuendo correctly) was just awesome. And now I’m thinking it’s weird how the internet, my high school gateway to Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc and all the fascinating articles and interviews and song lyrics that built a teenage mythology of this epic Kinsella in my mind — sorry, I used to smoke a lot of pot and read too much Romantic poetry back then, hence the lionizing — is now letting me write to you, which is fun but not as fun as meeting you was. Anyway, thanks for sharing your stuff with the world. I blame you, among many others, for my decision to get my BFA in poetry. Best decision ever, aside from continued survival. Anyway, I’m done burdening you with praise. HAVE A GREAT TOUR!
Hi Tim Kinsella. I’m moving to Chicago, and my boyfriend is moving to Chicago, and about 65% of the reason why we are moving to Chicago is because we love you. It’s probably like 85% of the reason HE is moving there; it’s less for me, because I’m doing that MFA Writing program at the SAIC — which I think you ALSO did. It was the one I really wanted to do, I’m not just stalking you.
Anyway, as a birthday present, I am making my boyfriend a guide to things to do in Chicago. I think this is a bit of a shot in the dark, but I’m wondering if you could possibly give a recommendation or two? I know you’re a busy man, but you don’t understand how much this would make his birthday very VERY exciting and beautiful and special. Fingers crossed over here!
Hi Tim. Long time no see. In fact we last met at acquaragia in nonantola, probabily 12-15 years ago. Are you by chance coming back to italy? I’d love to see you again man. Take care!
not that it matters, but are you actually italian-american? always imagined kinsella to be an irish or english name for some reason
Maybe his mother’s Italian.